Save the Enemy (2 page)

Your dad probably read you books like
The Giving Tree
when you were a kid. My dad did read me
The Giving Tree
once, calling it “evil” in that it “promotes the immoral destruction of the self.” (I was four.) He preferred
Atlas Shrugged
, which is basically about how rich people shouldn’t pay taxes. He has explained to me a lot over the course of my seventeen years that taxes are “slavery.” People are only “free when they act as they want to act.” Perfect for toddlers—Is my sarcasm coming through?
—Atlas Shrugged
is also the novelized explanation of the writer Ayn Rand’s “objectivist” philosophy of “rational self-interest.” In other words: extreme selfishness.

Try to get your mind around that a minute. Try to imagine your father preaching the virtues of extreme selfishness. Now imagine being four, the most selfish age in the world. Imagine trying to understand objectivism. Imagine trying to understand
anything
other than wanting to play and eat ice cream. (So I guess I was a good objectivist even without knowing it.) Over the years Dad tried to explain objectivism in less abstract terms. He said that people should be able to buy what they want and act how they want without the government or other people getting in their way. Interestingly, for all this, I still wasn’t allowed to set my own bedtime.

Anyway, John Galt is the mysterious hero of
Atlas Shrugged
. Most of the book’s other characters know his name
but don’t know who he is. They spend a lot of time asking “Who is John Galt?” One day I came home from first grade and heard a real-life spin-off of this. It was my dad yelling: “Galt! Galt! Where is Galt? Where is Galt?”

My mom came out of the kitchen, where she had been preparing an intricate meal that no one would appreciate. The kitchen was her sanctuary, her refuge: a place to cook for people who couldn’t have cared less about food’s subtleties. She wiped her hands on her elegant pants and said, “Galt is living on a farm in Scituate now.”

“What? What? Scituate? My dog is in Scituate?”

“Where’s Scituate?” I asked.

“It’s really far from here!” Dad said.

“Near Boston,” Mom explained.

“Jesus!” Dad said.

Calmly, my mom explained—once again—that she did not have time to deal with a puppy while also raising two children, one of whom was already showing signs of being able to recite the phone book while completely lacking interpersonal or consistent potty skills.

“So you just gave away my dog?” Dad protested, his voice rising. “You gave away my Galt? And now he’s near goddamn Boston?”

“Jacob, I didn’t give Galt away,” she said, exasperated. “He’s purebred.” She handed my father a check. Dad, when he tells the story, likes to say that it was for fifty dollars. I don’t remember how much it was for. I was six.

“This really takes selfishness to a whole new level,” Dad muttered. “Even Ayn Rand wouldn’t go this far.” Then he turned to me. “Zoey, put on your shoes, we’re going for a walk.”

He attached the check to Galt’s leash, which had not been
sent to Scituate, and made me take the check for a walk with him around the neighborhood. Mom went back into the kitchen to craft the perfect meal no one would want to eat. Ben rearranged the refrigerator magnets into geometric shapes.

Like I said, once people hear that story, they generally keep quiet on the subject of what my mom was really
like
.

On that walk, Dad talked about capitalism and pets. “Yes, they are unproductive. But they are very soothing. And they are primarily interested in themselves. Ayn Rand kept cats, you know.” (I did not. At that time, I honestly still thought Ayn Rand was a family friend, just one I’d never met in person.) Of course, we did later get Roscoe when we moved to Alexandria. Roscoe, the husky, named for no one in particular. Dad and I were finally able to convince Mom that it was the right time, right place—dog walkers being a “thing” (they weren’t back when we got Galt) and me big and responsible enough to help out, at least in theory. And Mom ended up loving Roscoe. Loved taking him for walks not just across the river, but all around Old Town, where she studied our neighborhood’s pre-colonial architecture and mused about the Civil War’s lingering presence. (The first deaths of the Civil War happened right near our townhouse, in a place that is now a luxury hotel.) Loved brushing him, buying him treats. She kissed and cuddled him in a way that she never did with the rest of us, not even Ben.

There’s another story about my mom, one that I never tell: when I got my first period, she asked me if I needed her to take me to the doctor to be fitted for an IUD. I was eleven. I was an underdeveloped, shy girl who liked horses and books about girl detectives. Who hated to practice kicking and punching and backflips with my dad but still worshipped him
enough to do those things anyway. I did not need an IUD. What I needed was a hug, a lesson in how to use pads, and a conversation about how to tell Dad, gently but firmly, that I was never going to be able to flip a grown man over my puny back.

At least Mom was a little better with Ben. She doted on him in a weird, distant, micromanaging sort of way. For example, she wouldn’t care what he was doing for hours on end, and then suddenly she would become very concerned that he eat some kale. It fell on my weak and baffled shoulders to try to mother him in matters not having to do with bitter greens: homework, laundry, doctors, wearing shoes on the correct feet, and so on. But he still wouldn’t let me touch him. Just Mom. The older I got, the worse things got between Mom and me, especially in the year before she died. (Died, meaning: was randomly killed. The word “died” somehow helps, like it was cancer or something, a slow and inevitable burn.) We yelled at each other about everything. If I talked too much. If I didn’t talk enough. If was spending too much time practicing how to tie a rope into thirty different knots at Dad’s bizarre insistence. Thankfully Dad seemed to approve of the way I lived my life, so long as I pretended to agree with 95 percent of what he said, but then gave 5 percent selfish “objectivist” pushback.

I figured we’d work it out. Once I went to college and Mom and I saw each other just a few weeks a year, we’d have a routine. We’d settle into one of those healthy and enjoyable mom/daughter relationships that involve a lot of shopping and silent knowing smiles over tea together. But unless there are ghosts, and she is one—and ghosts can shop—that’s not going to happen. Not even Ben believes that.

So, one more splash of water in the bathroom mirror. One
more brave face for my new schoolmates. One more attempt to make sense of the life I never really understood to begin with. At times like these (and I hate myself for it), I wonder if Ben actually has it easier than I do.

One of Maryland’s state sports is jousting. I think I could have been happy as a jouster, if only my parents had moved us a little farther north and gave me access to a horse. (Did you know that milk is Maryland’s state beverage? I really got fixated on Maryland for a while there.) But this is Virginia, and after school I have lacrosse practice.

It’s hard for me to emphasize just how much I hate this sport. In Rhode Island I’d never really been aware of the existence of lacrosse. These Virginia kids seem to have been handed long sticks with nets shortly after birth. I’d understand using one to catch a butterfly. But to throw a very hard ball from one person to another, ultimately flinging it at some poor schlub standing in front of a goal? The strange part is that the nicest kids at my new school really
love
lacrosse. (Even the super-smart girl who’s already gotten into Harvard and is likely to become a cardiac surgeon.) All these Shenandoah School girls: they are polite and persuasive, sporty yet bookish. That’s how they convinced me. They said lacrosse
would be easy. They said that it’d be a great way to meet people. And so fun, especially the away games. Time off from afternoon classes! Special treatment! A bus ride to a new place!

Mom agreed. It would be a first for her otherwise blank Zoey checklist:
check, my disappointing daughter is participating in team sports for once
. Never mind that I’m terrible at athletics, except for occasionally thriving when performing Dad’s martial arts, which I’m certain he made up along the way. And that’s not due to any natural ability. It’s just all the years with him in the backyard. He once taught me how to use a
sword
, for Christ’s sake, using a big black-smithed thing I could barely lift, that we got at a Renaissance Faire.
“In this dangerous world, it is important to know how to outwit and immobilize a foe with a weapon.”
Granted, I refused to train anymore with him right around the time Mom suggested I get fitted for an IUD. Swinging swords and kicking an invisible enemy’s ass no longer held the same appeal. Still, my muscles probably remember something. Maybe.

Dad was right, though, I guess. To his credit, he doesn’t bring it up. I wonder if he wishes (as I do) that he or I had been with Mom during the attack so we could have fought back. That we could have pulled out our sword, which I believe is still somewhere in the house. Or in a perfect world, Mom had joined in with Dad and me when I was a kid. That she had known and practiced jiu-Dadsu and clumsy sword-fighting herself.

But, no. And now, lacrosse.

I’m the girl who always comes home with a clean uniform. This is a big no-no in group sports. I want to quit the team. Naturally, the Shenandoah headmaster won’t let me. (Mr. Standiford is one of the well-meaning grown-ups who first asked me what mom was really
like
.)

Today, for instance, I spend the two-hour practice—two hours!—throwing the ball down the field, then racing to pick it up and dribbling back to where I started. It’s a lot like being a dog, playing fetch with myself, except that Roscoe and Galt enjoyed fetch. The other girls interact with each other and learn plays. At least I think they do; I am not a hundred percent sure what a “play” is, and when it’s all over I wait in the parking lot for Dad to pick me up, wishing I could curl up and melt into the asphalt.

One by one, the girls leave. All offer me a comic “Good practice!” as they hop into their cars or are picked up by their own parents. They mean well; they really do. They feel sorry for me. I am both New Girl and Tragic Figure. I feel sorry for me, too.

Half an hour later
I am alone.

As discussed, Dad tries to be devoted but is absentminded. You’d think that an Objectivist would be full of the fire of life or something.

I try calling his cell phone. Straight to voice mail. I doubt he’s charged it this week. Best-case scenario: he’s at a shelter picking up Roscoe. Most likely: he’s forgotten he has children and is at home on the Internet studying compelling new arguments on the wisdom of returning to the gold standard. Ben has actually tried to explain to Dad why returning to the gold standard is not, in fact, wise—especially if the United States wishes to keep participating in the global economy. Dad doesn’t care if the United States drops out of the global economy, not if it means we no longer have a “fiat currency.”

They’ve had this conversation many times. Maybe they’re having it now.

I pick up my schoolbag, which weighs sixteen tons, and
start walking home. We live about a mile and a half from Shenandoah. It’s not an impossible walk. Half an hour, very picturesque. But my legs are tired from all that fetching. My brain is tired from all that trying-to-hold-my-shit-together. As I shamble down the street, I hear someone call my name.

“Zoey!”

This guy, Pete, is right at the edge of the parking lot, beeping from the driver’s seat of an old brown Volvo. His mom gave it to him. It’s actually one of the few things I know about him, because at Shenandoah, having an old brown Volvo is laughable. (Not in a mean way; nothing is done in a mean way here. People just find the old brown Volvo amusing. I don’t quite get the joke.) Pete and his twin sister, Abby, are in my class. Both of them are boarders. Abby is nice. I thought she was going to be the goofy sort of person I could become close with, especially after she told me—apropos only of sitting beside me at the same lunch table—that she was on the competitive roller-skating circuit.
Yes!
Weird, like my jiu-Dadsu. A competitive roller skater would be exactly the sort of person I could really let loose with.

Then I started asking about Pete, at which point she got sort of deflated. I also found out she was planning to get a PhD in biology after studying foreign relations at Georgetown. I’m still hoping, despite my up-and-down grades (some As, mostly in English, some C-minuses, mostly in anything that requires memorization or equations, then a bunch of B-pluses), to get into Berkeley. I think I’m the last kid in my class not to have heard back from the good colleges. I’d feel so much more connected with Shenandoah if I met even one person here who cared about jeans, aspired to be on reality TV, and was likely to become a mid-level state government employee. Pete wants to be a singer-songwriter, which may
sound promising on the mediocrity front, but he already gets paid to perform.

“Hey, need a ride?” he asks. The passenger-side window is rolled down.

I lean in. I probably don’t smell fantastic.

“I’m okay,” I say. “I can walk.”

“You live in Old Town, right?” Pete says. “I’m on my way to a gig there anyway. At Lee’s. You should come by. It’s a cool place.”

Lee’s is a Civil War-themed restaurant and bar in Old Town Alexandria, a few blocks from the small townhouse where I live. Dad has forbidden me to eat there because Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who is from Alexandria, was obviously “on the wrong side of the war.” (Though I’ll note there are a number of Virginians who don’t think that’s so obvious.) I’ll add that my dad actually had to explain to me his reasons for thinking Lee was on the wrong side. In general, Dad fully supports states’ rights, which would ordinarily mean he’d be on Lee’s side. “If the slaves themselves, who are people, are unable to participate in the decision-making process about their own fates, then it’s hard to understand the Confederacy’s demands as being a true exercise of states’ rights. Politics and personhood must coalesce. Understood?”